BlogStats

08 June 2015

Reflections on Directions

George Rebane

We are told that the Internet is forever. The global system today is already so vast and complex that no one can map it, and no one knows what comprises all of its processors (aka bit shifters) and data storage repositories (aka bit buckets). So we can think of entries like these as being squirreled away in some bucket(s) somewhere, perhaps purposely archived, but most certainly forgotten. And then in some distant future a sentient sapience may come upon it accidentally or in the process of researching the happenings and attitudes of ancient times. In that spirit, I send them greetings from this last great century of Man.

Today the world is tightly interconnected. By this I mean that for those who pay attention, a significant event in one part of the world can be quickly known by everyone in the world. And this goes also for most of the not so significant happenings. What we have called western civilization is in retreat – its cultures, values, mores, and beliefs rapidly and compliantly transforming as more aggressive civilizations, once great then declined, are reasserting themselves. In the ‘west’ wholesale dumbth (q.v.) is the new modus vivendi.

America’s Great Experiment is on the verge of massive failure. Everywhere we look, ‘Can Man govern himself?’ is answered in the negative. We are beyond the tipping point in the sense that the normal correctives of governance that restored stability in the past are now inoperative, and if the legacy of the Founders’ ideas are to be restored, it will be through a yet to be determined catharsis. And the more likely result of such a catharsis will not be a restoration but a fundamental transformation, already an adopted objective of many who still call themselves Americans.

Yet a good half of America’s (and the west’s) political leaders assure us that our massive economic travails and onslaughts from other civilizations will all be handled in due course, and that in the end a perhaps new, but most certainly benign, beneficial, and liberal society will survive in the Westphalian format (q.v.) which has governed international relations for over three centuries. The other half of our political culture draws ever greater numbers to support a brave new world of global governance whose formative objectives have been summarized under the UN’s Agenda 21 initiative (q.v.), objectives whose daily implementations strongly deny their A21 provenance.

The throngs who actively cheer or quietly acquiesce to a centrally planned collectivist future share a bewildered view of what is now happening around them. In the large, America’s citizenry is beyond the reach of reasoned discussion because our educational system has systematically excised the tools of critical thought from the minds of two successive generations, replacing such formerly taught tools with a relatively small collection of politically correct populist slogans that require no higher than brain stem processing. The record of this cognitive catastrophe has been documented over the last four decades by our National Center for Educational Statistics under the Department of Education (see the much renamed embarrassment currently labeled ‘National Assessment of Adult Literacy’).

Today we are in what a miniscule fraction of our population recognizes as the pre-Singularity years. Those of us in that cohort strongly believe that we are on the verge of an emerging machine super-intelligence that will change (or perhaps terminate) human history. In the preamble to such a Singularity event, our technology is advancing in a pell mell fashion on many fronts. The most visible effects of this advance are the worldwide displacements of human labor by capital that commands the development, acquisition, and emplacement of smart machines to do the former work of humans, and, more importantly, new work now critical to our societies that humans cannot do.

But a more important focus is on the loss of jobs that humans can do, especially those like sewing garments in which humans have excelled. Today most of such labor is expended in Asian sweatshops offering jobs which lift the poor and hopeless to a steady income, perhaps the first in their lives. But that is not for long, for robots have been encroaching on those sweat shops and manufactories for the last several years. And now we hear of a breakthrough wherein a British university has announced the development of a robot that can do the most difficult of the operations – sew two loose, irregularly shaped pieces of cloth together with speed and precision which human seamstresses cannot match. The warning bells are already sounding in Bangladesh, possibly the poorest of the Asians making clothes for the world.

Today Bangladeshi manufacturers are replacing their higher paid humans with machines that pattern, cut, and transport clothing pieces to human seamstresses. Given their expressed interest in robot seamstresses, tomorrow they will replace the remaining humans in short order. Of interest will be the reaction of the west’s collectivists who have decried Asian sweatshop working conditions. Now all of those working conditions will go out the window along with the work. But few expect the displaced workers to take quietly to their new redundancy. There will be a resurgence of luddite riots in such countries with industries that for a few years offered the hope of steady work for cheap labor, and then were forced to withdraw it as technology advanced yet again.

The Asian manufacturers will enjoy very short celebrations as they automate. Unless they are located near the source of their raw materials, there will be every reason to remove the manufacturing nearer to the sales and consumption locales of their finished products. In America some are already dancing in the street that manufacturing that departed forty years ago is coming back home. Note that I said ‘manufacturing’ and not ‘manufacturing jobs’. Even though the dollar value of manufacturing has been increasing, its fraction of GDP has been flat for the last fifty years. And during this interval manufacturing jobs have decreased from 25% of the non-farm workforce to less than 10%.

However, productivity has continued its slow but measured pace upward without much increase in the average wage of the workers. All this to the consternation and amazement of our economists who may be the most attended and overrated profession in our society. The explanation stares them in the face, but is unacceptable to many of them because they ignore the real impact of technology acceleration AND the intrusive bumbling hand of our growing government (more here).

In the interval, the collectivists have won the culture wars. Many of our high school graduates cannot read their diplomas, know literally nothing about the world around them, least of all how our government in constituted and functions under the US Constitution. Their knowledge base consists of a few disparate slogans about the environment, racial discrimination, the evils of capitalism, and an almost pathogenic sensitivity to new ideas. A small fraction of them are prepared for a four-year college, and almost all of them have to go through remedial courses to teach them what they should have learned in junior high school.

In college these young people encounter a cadre of professors steeped in the politically correct manners and means to play into their ignorant and sensitive charges. The less prepared teachers today encounter students who will complain bitterly and report them to the administration if they are exposed to thoughts that they claim will ‘trigger’ reactions that may tarnish their preconceived view of what a fulfilling and accommodating life should be. The situation today has gotten so out of hand that even liberal professors are scouring their course contents so as to pre-emptively remove materials and references to works that may trigger career threatening reactions in their coddled young charges (more here). And, of course, the little darlings know all this, which takes an additional toll from an education that is supposed to prepare students for life in the real world.

In essence, the current state of wholesale national dumbth and demand for a secure life from an ever larger government says to many people that the liberals are victors in the War for the Soul of America (2015) as recently argued by University of Illinois historian Andrew Hartman. Dr Hartman contrasts our country today with the former “normative America” which was “an inchoate group of assumptions and aspirations shared by millions of Americans during the postwar years. Normative America prized individual merit, delayed gratification, social mobility and other values that middle-class whites recognized as their own” – values that preferred men as breadwinners and women as homemakers, sexual discretion, and faith in God and American exceptionalism.

Hartman joins many social observers of all political stripes in assigning the 1960s as the beginning of the culture wars and the Götterdämmerung of Normative America. The defeat of Normative America was overseen by US Presidents from both parties, but its real energy was sustained by years of federal liberal leadership and social programs issuing from a Democrat led Congress. So now we are beyond the tipping point with national authors like Charles Murray (By the People, 2015) educating readers to how we got here, and laying out a schema for a non-violent revolution at the grass roots level to remake the federal government.

And in that same vein others are asking where do we go from here - what strategy should we fashion and follow into our future? Ian Bremmer, political scientist and global risk strategist at Time, offers answers in his Superpower: Three choices for America’s role in the world (2015). We can become “Independent America” and withdraw as the world’s policeman, minding our own affairs as we minimize our military and concentrate on developing our internal potential. Or “Moneyball America” is our second choice wherein we develop our military and fight terrorism as an equal with a contingent of the willing while wheeling and dealing on the international scene to serve our economic and political interests. Everyone else in our alliance will be doing the same – sort of ‘one for all, and all for one’.

Finally, we may choose to become the “Indispensible America” and make an all-in commitment to international leadership because only we have the means to institute global power balance and create a stable environment for international trade. In short, we will remain the world’s sheriff and become more so to “promote and protect” American values globally. One critic and columnist has asked why can’t we pick and assemble various aspects from Column A and Column B and … . Our federal government meanwhile keeps its own counsel, telling neither its citizens nor its allies what our intent or direction should be. (more here)

The problem with all those thoughts are that most of these pundits – but not all; see Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - don’t acknowledge the systemic changes occurring during these pre-Singularity years and the approaching tsunami of the Singularity itself. I write this during a period in which the United States has demonstrated itself to be ineffective in reviving itself from a self-inflicted recession/depression, and continues to be a feckless global player while our enemies are queueing up to change the world order as my fellow Americans indulge themselves in their immediate pursuit of bread and circuses.

Comments

Great essay George, but our society wants 'social justice'. Whatever that is. I'm afaid that technology has allowed so many to live in a virtual reality that they believe that it can be made real by adjusting the dials and switches of government. Progressives and moderates are completely sold on the idea that our economy can be 'fixed' by nothing more than passing the correct legislation and having the Fed print an abundance of money. Delayed gratification, personal responsibility and self initiative are bad words now.
At the end of it, our society believes firmly that a happy, contented and prosperous life can be acheived by simply having the govt deliver it to our front door as a 'right'. Actual reality consistantly mandates a different result, but what does reality know?

History is not static and it does not progress linearly. There was more free speech and unimpeded expression in 5th-century Athens than in Western Europe between 1934-45, or in Eastern Europe during 1946-1989. An American could speak his mind more freely in 1970 than now. Many in the United States had naively believed that the Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, and over two centuries of American customs and traditions had guaranteed that Americans could always take for granted free speech and unfettered inquiry.

That is an ahistorical assumption. The wish to silence, censor, and impede thought is just as strong a human emotion as the desire for free expression — especially when censorship is cloaked in rhetoric about fairness, equality, justice, and all the other euphemisms for not allowing the free promulgation of ideas.

George Orwell devoted his later years to warning us that while the fascist method of destroying free expression was easily identified (albeit only with difficulty combatted), the leftwing totalitarian impulse to squelch unpopular speech was far harder to resist — couched as it was in sloganeering about the “people” and “social justice.”

"On page 31 of his popular The Conservatarian Manifesto, Charles C.W. Cooke makes a statement so satisfyingly true that I have ripped it off a half-dozen times on television.

"When was the last time you heard an aspiring conservative politician say, 'As George Bush said...' or 'I'm a George W. Bush conservative'?" asks Cooke, a witty political writer for National Review. "The mere thought is preposterous."

As Cooke notes, "During the Bush administration's turbulent eight years, the Republican Party steadily ruined its reputation, damaging the public conception of conservatism in the process. Republicans spent too much, subsidized too much, spied too much, and controlled too much." And yet here we are in spring 2015 and the top of the GOP presidential polls is haunted yet again by the most persistent four-letter word in American politics.

The noble aim of The Conservatarian Manifesto is to replace the big-government, interventionist, tax-cut-and-spend philosophy of Bush conservatism with something that leans more libertarian, particularly on spending (including on defense), drugs, nation building, and crony capitalism. So far, so great.

But political manifestos with catchy names tend to imply calls for group action and team spirit. If libertarians are going to attach themselves to a group of constitutional conservatives who reliably caucus Republican, those of us who are GOP skeptics must wonder: How can we trust that this bloc won't yet again yield to the temptations of Bushism?"

"Bushism"? That's giving him too much credit. Our 'massive' debt didn't start with him and neither did his sort of governance. RINOs or Country Club Republicans have been around for decades. John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller (to name just 2) had the Compassionate Conservatism going long before Bush's team gave it the name.
The short answer is you can't trust anyone in power. The founders of our nation knew human nature and also knew it wouldn't change no matter what technological advances came our way. That's why they didn't want the fed govt transferring money or goods from one group to another. None. Because they had the power to mint money. The states couldn't print money and weren't to get any from the feds. The states were then free to do whatever they chose and if you didn't like it, you could move.
Unfortunately, American humans decided this was too limiting and we got 'progressives' (Rs and Dems) that thought they would shove the law aside and do what they wanted. The Supreme Court was supposed to protect us from wayward politicians, but soon they became a bunch of clever johnnies, torturing the law to make it fit their view of the world.
All you can do is vote for those that cherish the Constitution and have the original ideals of the founders in mind. Forget parties and affiliations.

I don't know if any of you read Peter Schweizer's book "Clinton Cash." It's hard to put down once you start reading. Most of us have hunches about something politically wrong, but this book makes it obvious. I hate to say it but the murders of our Benghazi Ambassador, his secretary, the two brave former Seals and the cover-up aftermath was like a flag waving to get our attention focused on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and this administration. It becomes obvious why nothing is done about political corruption in high places and Departments. This book shows how powerful Hillary and Bill Clinton are internationally and how they've enriched themselves and others during the process. "...the Clintons have operated at the fringes of the developed world, often appearing to facilitate huge resource-extraction deals that were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The era of globalization has opened up a Wild West bonanza where profits can be made on a scale not seen since the height of nineteenth-century colonialism....in despotic areas of the developing world where the rules are very different." The Author's 2011 book was "Throw Them All Out."

BonnieM 438pm - Thank you. I have not read the book but have heard several reports of the pittance that Clinton Foundation passes through to its trumpeted recipients - some reports go as low as a dime on the dollar. That should be the smoking gun in all this, because the 90 cents of each contributed dollar goes into the Clinton political slush fund and personal consumptions which is also marbled beyond recognition with the 'foundation's business'. Every contributor, most specifically every foreign contributor, knows what side is buttered by their contribution. And almost no one, including Fox, picks up on this obvious travesty.

George R, above. The Clintons are politicians. So are the Bushes. If we keep bickering amongst ourselves about who is "right", we will get more of the same regardless of who is sitting in the White House.

This liberal/progressive would love to see some real welfae reform. I believe in giving a helping hand rather than a handout. I would advocate for more money for recipients FOR A MUCH SHORTER PERIOD OF TIME. It infuriates me that "middle-class" citizens who lose their jobs usually don't qualify for welfare because they earned too much money when they were working.

I believe we should re-educate workers wo are displaced from their jobs. I believe that you should not get more money if you have additional children while on welfare. I believe that you should have to do some type of community work to receive welfare. I believe that corporations should be fined and taxed for exporting American jobs overseas (and rewarded for bring jobs back to the US).

That should get the conversation rolling! (Please beyond "it's all the lib/progs fault.")

PatriciaS 1209pm - OK then, let's roll. A sad fact of "displaced" workers these days is the reason for their displacement. No matter what strictures we put on repressing the freedom of American companies to do business all over the world, at least a good half of our workforce is simply uneducable to hold down a 21st century job that maintains any semblance of the lifestyle they have come to expect. Some sort of guaranteed national income will be required to supplement what they can earn on the open job market. And as I've covered here recently, no one knows how to structure a workable GNI that does not reduce the whole country to a lowest economic denominator. The graphic in 'GNI(contd) - Buffett's Epiphany'http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2015/05/gni-continued-buffetts-epiphany.html